


'cause your hands and lips still know their way around

by orphan_account



Series: I KNOW YOU WANNA GO TO HEAVEN BUT YOU'RE HUMAN TONIGHT. [2]
Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst and Tragedy, Bad Poetry, Emotional Hurt, F/M, First Love, Ghost Sex, Hurt No Comfort, Mild Blood, Psychological Trauma, sorta Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-24 14:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16641690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: you realise Jason Dean is a luxury you cannot afford, and though the world is no Eden, perhaps you have found your forbidden fruit in his shadowed eyes and blood-stained lips regardless.





	'cause your hands and lips still know their way around

**Author's Note:**

> wow I need to edit this & issa big mess but w.e I'm really excited (over literally nothing bc this is literally horrible—)

**[ ‘CAUSE YOUR HANDS AND LIPS STILL KNOW THEIR WAY AROUND. ]**

**/**

you say you’ve forgotten him but then you’re staring at the ocean outside your window and pretending you can still see him in the ripples of it. you remember him facing the burning sulphuric wish that is life and realising his fingertips have become too alkaline for a lust such as her. you remember the both of you, together, laughing and crying and reminiscing about the dark things you’ve done for love or for revenge, recalling the blood on your hands, tasting it, washing it away, seeing it burn and flash and still be there. you used to pray for times like this, you remember this too. you used to think they’d last forever.

he smiles at you, too familiar and too vicious, and it takes you a while to notice that it favours the left side, slides a bit less toward the right, looks a bit more like smugness and victory. “it’s over now, Veronica,” he says, voice like blackberry wine and peach vodka, silk and satin and cotton knitted together, “but what do you want to do with your life now that I’m dead?”

you wonder if this is what people mean when they say the heartache drives them insane. there’s gore on your skin, you wonder if it’s yours or his or perhaps the poor little girl in front of you, a star on her chest, turning the sky crimson with regret. 

you miss him. the longing is undeniably there. pretending it isn’t—that’s just another way to die quietly.

**...**

maybe this is death. maybe you’re already six-feet underground and he’s just a memory, a conjuring of everything you did right and everything you did wrong at the same time. he says to you his abandonment is God’s mercy on your humanity, on the grace left still in your fingertips, that you are holy to have been with him at all.

you kiss him one night, and his lips are all over your mouth, his hands fit into your skin like it's a glove. he touches you exactly how he used to, as if nothing has ever happened, as if he's not just guilty conscience and a bit of tangible smoke. afterwards, you have nightmares for weeks of falling into the ocean. your screams sound like sobs, sound like victory and a sip of defeat, like tea and coffee and Excalibur piercing through skin, drawing blood, like the sound of metal clattering to the floor, shattering, breaking.

you want to scream, shout, beg for God to bring your soul back. you miss yourself more often than not, wonder what you were like before him, but God never listens to you, never looks past the sin in your arteries, so you just hold the rifle to your throat instead and let it bleed.

**...**

the shimmer of the moon reminds you more of a sliced wound: glowing, dripping crimson in the night’s haze, smelling like apple juice and wine cellars, like him. you listen to his heartbeat, wait until it synchronizes with yours beneath the waves of a swimming pool and count to ten until the blood stops flowing, until his legs turn to oak branches, gnarled at the edges, twisted.

there’s still blood on your skin, a hazy recollection of your crimson-stained memories, purple blotches feeling like the seven deadly sins across your neck. sometimes, you don’t know if he comes for you or your solidity, don’t remember that you’re nothing but porous, permeable, haunted and heavenly and a Renaissance girl walking upon a war of gods. who if you scream out would hear you among the hierarchy of angels? who would hear you beyond the choking of your voice, the suffocation of your lungs? your mouth so much as opens and the wind gags on her own smoke, the earth swells and sighs, the trees relax again into the ground, and you whisper,  _why can’t I speak? why can’t I ever speak?_

"it's September, Veronica," he breathes, trailing soft memories on your collar, and it makes you think of lazy indolent and slow again, makes you fantasize about passionate slick and moving, "the leaves are falling." he smiles, your breath catches in your throat, and he says, "what do you plan to do when you start to fall with them?"

...

you watch as the surgeons get ahold of his body and tear it apart limb from limb, watch as they find an endless winter with a golden hourglass of liquid sand inside, small traces of warmth and comfort and you among the ice, a slowness in the evergreen needles of his bones. you dream about heat when they swallow him with machines and injections. you dream about gold juice in your blood and little devils flying out his ribs into caves where they belong, buried in moonlight and stardust.

seeing him again, making deals with demons and selling your soul for another glance at him, tasting the treachery on your lips when the seals break—it feels like remembering, like longing and desperation seeping into your bones, feels like pulling the essence out and leaving you marrowless, a shivering mess, spineless and small and f a _d  i n **g . . .**_

you still can’t explain why you did what you did, why you didn’t do what you possibly should have. all you wanted was to take off the masks, throw away the weighted piece of clay and ceramics, see his face and eyes, remember what shade his cheeks are, forget what marks the facade has left him with. all you wanted was to once again play ghost with him on highways and sip bourbon as the wheels screech and scream and  **break—**

you sleep by yourself more often than not these days. perhaps if this body of his were not touched by death and the glow of a renegade God, you would call it heavenly.

**...**

“you know, I’m actually impressed, Veronica,” he says, a smile on his lips that looks wrong wrong wrong. there’s a halo above his head, shining, burning your eyes, making him look like light and innocence and purity, making you think of darkness and taint and sin. you wish you could speak of his sacrileges less and his virtues more, but he is a broken-bone reflection of Achilles and his love for Patroclus even as their myth dies beneath the collapsing layers of Ancient Greece and the crumbling empire of broken hearts. “you fucked me over pretty badly. but you’ll die soon,” he promises, “and then what will you do?”

hearing his voice—sometimes it's like falling in love all over again, swimming in that sea of blues and greens except this time, the colours are anything but him. bathroom stalls come alive with blood stains and gore and paint and “this is pathetically aesthetic” isn't really a phrase for saying, isn't really a phrase for telling, but he does it anyway, waxes poetic about how the hint of crimson matches the liquid in your arteries, smells like the arguments you have with your mother in the middle of the living room, screams and shouts and shrieks bouncing off the walls and echoing in all the ways it hurts.

you realise later that death doesn't really discriminate between the stutter in your throat or the asphyxia in your blood, just takes and takes until you're turning into a forged suicide note and a lot of regret. a bottle of blue poison, but still a lot of regret.

**...**

the night before, you don’t think to tell him that you love him, and he kisses you goodnight and holds your hand, but he’s  **gone**  when you wake up again. you touch him and his fingers pass through you and you  **scream** until your throat turns to cinder and your voice dies in your throat like a forgotten song.

faintly, you recall that this is such an ugly shade of red, such a Sherwood way of doing things. you are awake but the sky feels heavy. you are here but the bed feels empty, stained with blood, crimson. “how does it feel to be alive with a lifeless heart?” he asks, and you don’t reply even as his laughter cools your blood, even as his faded-red lips turn your lungs to ash.

you look at the constellations in his glazed eyes, half-lidded and shining and dull at the same time. pristine black seems to brighten unto a soft navy. the memory of him is like a dim wind blowing light in your face, like moonlight on the river of his soul, like dusk making your tears bloom like spring roses.

every night without him is like Asphodel amongst the Elysium. today chasing after his ghost feels a bit less like dying and a bit more like coming home.

**...**

there’s a red stain on your neck where his lips brushed against your skin. the contact left marks on your soul, a stagger in your step, a sharpness to the oxygen you breathe, and suddenly he’s standing in front of you again, eyes glinting like blades in the moon-laced night, lips curled strangely, his abandonment smelling like Chanel hand-cream and Glossier lip gloss.

he smiles at you. “thank you, Veronica,” he says, his warm breath tickling your collar, “this was, in its novelty, an incredibly sweet life.”

you blink, you stare, you push another Marlboro desktop favourite into your swollen mouth and feel the smoke pump through your blood. you exchange a few more words, watch again as your hands pull the trigger and feel the world sob away into a washed-out shipwreck as the stars leave his eyes, feel your body split into a thousand different particles of diamond and salt.

he adds, “I’m sorry,” as an afterthought, says it with blank eyes and hollowed bones, and like a fool you smile into the false kiss he leaves on your lips and convince yourself that you can someday forgive him.

**...**

you see him smile both in a golden river of regret and emptiness. “it’s been a year, Veronica,” he says, “it’s October. the leaves are falling again.” he shivers, breathes shakily into your hand, and his eyes seem to walk away from you, covered in soot and cinder. he asks again, “what do you plan to do when you start to fall with them?”

you don’t tell him the leaves feel like ash on your fingertips. besides,the ambit of your relationship has never been wide, never been more than a broken statue of God standing outside the church you go to every Sunday and never pray to, and it’s  **crooked** , just like you and him and this incredibly strange love you share.

he holds a hand to your cheek, sheds a few tears that taste like sugar rather than salt, and tugs at your soul. he writes apologies on your lips before burying them in the ground, gives a flower, and acts as if it’ll steal back what’s been taken.

you win some, you lose some, you still end up empty.

**...**

there is temptation and there is silence and there is the shape of his mouth as God leaves your body tingling with death and life and everything for which you used to thrive. the trial is done, your death will be warranted by tomorrow, and suddenly you remember careless, blissful nights spent at the 7/11 down the street, desire and pleasure and lust infused in every kiss he trails down your spine. you remember toxic self-loathing each time he touches you and leaves scars and calls them  **beautiful**.

you forget how it was so easy to be devoured and consumed by deceit and lies and blank stares. you try to remember a motive, something beyond thunderstorm and leather jackets and your father’s stare as you sit across from him during dinner, but there is nothing.

you remember him, then; remember his shadowed hair, hooded eyes, remember his porcelain skin and translucent lips and how he glowed when he laughed. you remember how he cupped your cheeks and brushed his nose against yours and breathed his own strained life into you. you remember the bruises on your neck, remember why you’ve done the things you’ve done, remember what the Heathers died for.

and more often than not, you remember what it was like to watch him die.

**...**

every kiss is a gift, you think. every time he presses you against the wall with his flickering body and sucks on your neck until it’s purple and bloated is another moment where the emptiness diffuses out your body and the sense of holiness seeps in. every time you wake up to his eyes standing over you and your vision flashes briefly to a broken body cold to the touch and  **rotting**. every time he laughs and drags his nails across your back and you scream and he loves it, loves every time you moan, loves every time you beg. every time he stands by your locker like an angel in red, wings made of barbed wire and halo flashing like disco lights. every time he kisses you in front of Duke and McNamara and makes their powdered faces twist into something ugly. every time he shows you his blood-soaked fists and every time you notice the blood is  **yours**. every time. every single fucking time.

you’re seventeen again when you’re with him, young and wild and free, Veronica Sawyer with the fucking Heathers beside her, beautiful and reckless and a dead girl walking, so lucky to have a beautiful boy like him, so lucky to be in love.

he promises that he’ll get better, promises that he’ll change, and then there is nothing but the late nights where he shares with you his youth and sardonic jokes and plays strip croquette, nothing but the moments where his eyes get blank and he scratches at your neck until it bleeds and then scratches some more, nothing but the days for which you live and die at the same time.

there is the sunsets hanging above you in a liquid ombré of pink while he paints  the sacrilege in the sky, but then there is the rest, and nostalgia is a liar. the melancholy is always there, though. the disappointment always sleeps in your bones.

**...**

your heart is blue and sapphire and at the same time ocean-green with all the tears you’ve cried, a running river swirling in silent circles, the soft caress of fire in your veins, making dusk bloom in your eyes, travelling nowhere. your lover lays his wasteland head on your lap. your lover taps his fingers on your knees, lets his hands sing a tune you’ve heard before but have forgotten to remember. your lover kisses you, knows how the dawns feel, trails his nails down your back and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you.

perhaps if you could have only let the shadow of the trees fall a bit behind you. perhaps if you could have only sat somewhere different for a while, beside the lemongrass and orange trees, next to the mountains and rivers and the swirling masses of that other side of life you’ll never get to experience. you imagine the leather seats of his car, the classical music playing in the background, copper coins falling down with a melody you’ve woven into your heart, sucking lollipops and drinking slushies and getting high off how your nights are perfumed with that familiar sense of smoke smoke smoke drink drink drink sex sex sex.

the world is no Eden, you know this, and you’re no Eve—you imagine Lilith on her throne again, teeth sharp as the knife you hold, black hair falling upon her shoulders,  **beautiful** —but perhaps you can make this little town into your own shelter, your own place of creation, flecked with the shade of his eyes, his divinity forever within your reach.

**...**

you realise now that Jason Dean was a luxury you could not afford. he was soft and at the same time harsh, his eyes distant and fogged, his laughter like sunshine leaving burns on your bare flesh. he unearthed parts of you don’t think anyone else can ever again, gave you a bottle of blue poison and let it fall from Heather’s cherry lips, filled a space within your heart you were unaware was vulnerable. yet his hands, his fingers—calloused in the spots he touched the gun and sulphur and disappeared in a flash of golden betrayal—they remind you of angels, of a halo not like barbed wire but aureate, of fingers and the trail of holy water they leave on naked skin and you remember what it was like to love him, what it was like to be with him.

(the world is no Eden, yes, but perhaps you have found your forbidden fruit in his shadowed eyes and blood-stained lips regardless.)


End file.
